The McMansion towers of Kaiping

I caught a bus to Kaiping, 140km south west of Guangzhou, to see the rather unusual, and in fact World Heritage listed, diaolou, or fortified towers.

They're actually scattered around the area, mainly in and around small villages, and they are the now mainly abandoned homes of returning overseas Chinese 'coolies', built around 100 years ago. 

Just as I'd read in the guide book, I was met at the bus station by an eager collection of taxi drivers, ready to negotiate a price to take me around the attractions. I agreed to one little chap's asking price of 300 yuan, as it was less than the 350 yuan suggested in Lonely Planet. It wasn't exactly cheap though, and my friend, horribly keen to show me absolutely everything, was a bit exhausting. Between us we knew about four words of each others' languages, he kept stopping and insisting I photograph yet one more tower, and in the end I cut the day short a bit early and told him I had to get back to Guangzhou quickly.

Apparently economic conditions in Guangdong Province in the 19th century were dire indeed, and there was a roaring trade in 'piglets for sale' - slavery basically, as poor rural folk were sent overseas, including to the goldfields of California and Australia. Some of these eventually made their fortunes in goldmining or various business enterprises, and eventually returned to their villages, where they built these huge McMansions, often using a defensive, tower-like style, to guard their wealth against the bandits who roamed around at the time.

Many had experience in European building styles and techniques, and Lonely Planet describes the architectural style as an eclectic mix of styles from Roman to Rococo. The village of Zili has the best collection, and that's where you pay to go in and wander around the restored buildings, traditional and McMansion, up to the top of some of the 5-storey ones, around the fields and duckponds, and along green and muddy village paths that sometimes become dead ends.

An odd, but somehow rather nice phenomenon, the World Heritage diaolou of Kaiping.

N

Guangzhou - how you've changed!

I first visited Guangzhou in 1985. It was my first experience of real China, after a few days in Hong Kong, and the city awaiting outside the main train station was a big and busy one, but not one that could be described as a modern metropolis in any way. The streets were narrow, dirty, and dusty. Transport was primitive, as were travellers' facilities for dining or sightseeing, or for anything much in fact.

Roll forward 28 years, and what a transformation I found the other week. It's always been big. Now by some measures, its the world's second biggest city with over 40 million people in its contiguous built up area and the biggest in China (there are many ways to measure these things and by other measures it's about third in China and 20th in the world). It's near the top of any list for numbers of skyscrapers, and it's got one of the best public transport systems I've ever come across. Guangzhou, you've been busy!

A lot of what they've done involves huge fortress tower block residences - a bit like the old Hong Kong. But many of the new developments are tasteful and state of the art. I tried to identify some of the places I'd been to on that earlier trip, but frankly in China, that tends not to work. It's simply not the same country it used to be. And I don't just mean that in a figurative way. Whole districts get flattened and rebuilt in utterly different configurations.

I'm a sucker for a tall building or two, and couldn't resist going up the world's fourth tallest freestanding structure (to one of the world's highest viewing platforms - the highest is a few floors up and costs a lot more than I wanted to pay. The Guangzhou Tower (often known by the old city name: Canton Tower) is quite a building. It's lit up like a Christmas tree at night, and for $20 or so you get to look down on this megacity from 433m.

There are two glass boxes, where you can scare yourself by walking out into clear space, sort of. But as a rule they're controlled by a photography concession, and you pay the photographer if you want to partake. By chance, one of the glass platforms was being installed with its Christmas decorations. The workers took a break, and I noticed people were using the opportunity to sneak in and get their thrills for free. The Chinese are world experts at this sort of thing! So in I went, and down I looked!

Later I went on a Pearl River nighttime cruise, and saw the whole city lit up like a Christmas tree!

In Eastern Guangzhou, the epicentre for all this super-modern stuff, they have dozens of spectacular new buildings, such as the Guangzhou Opera House and the Guangzhou Public Library. They're currently building a massive underground shopping centre. I was intrigued to see that the workers building an access ramp for this next world-beating super-modern creation were using shovels and shoulder yokes to shift concrete around!

See you again one day, Guangzhou!

N

Red flag over Longbridge

We'd been in China the week before, and every night we'd watched the state TV news broadcasts, usually starting with a piece on Premier Wen Jiabao's seemingly endless odyssey around the world, solemnly meeting heads of state, sealing deals for resource supplies, or otherwise checking out new outposts of empire. Now I was strolling through Cofton Park in my native Birmingham, looking down on the remains of the once mighty British icon, the Longbridge car works. The same works that through my childhood was employing 25,000 people, churning out the Mini, the Austin 1100, fine and fabulous machines like the A35 and A40 even. An ultimate symbol of British industrial might and design and manufacturing prowess, I always thought. (I was a bit naive in those days!)

But what was that? Was it really a Chinese flag flying proudly next to the MG sign? It was indeed, and amazingly, Chinese Premier Wen himself was on his way to visit the place! 

While the remnants of the huge site were being bulldozed away over the last few years, a deal was done with the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation to salvage a bit of car manufacturing there. It's all a bit mysterious to many of us as to who's benefitting how, and what else may come from this, but at the moment the enterprise is said to be employing a few Britons, assembling a British designed car from Chinese made parts.

And the Premier made it clear the project was important to him. On his British visit he flew in to Birmingham, and visited only Longbridge, Stratford (it seems he's a Shakespear fan), and London for talks with the Prime Minister.

N
Cartoon credits: The Independent & Dave Brown

Beijing banquets

We ate really well in China. The food is healthy, and came to us in great abundance and diversity. 

We were treated to numerous official banquets in our honour, and all kinds of vegetable and animal treats were served up - some very recognisable and some not so. We clearly recognised the fried cicadas for example, and one of us (N) got stuck into them and pronounced them delicious. The other of us (F) was more circumspect about the exotic offerings, but did admit that the prawns she was eating were, by any objective standard, at least as insect like as cicadas.

We were taken by some of the English menu translations in some of the restaurants too. Pictured is the 'Quack-bone' dish we ordered in one place, thinking it was duck. It turned out to be cracked bone, but was nevertheless delicious.

In Xuzhou as well as Beijing, the food is mainly Beijing style, and one interesting feature of this seemed to be that once you've gorged yourself trying to do a respectable job on the dozens of dishes piled up, sometimes on top of each other when table space runs out, someone then announces that the 'main course' is coming, and that the main course is either plain rice or plain noodles! We did our best, honestly.

N & F

'Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers'

This is everyone's favourite chapter heading in Mao's little red book, so we felt we had to use it, despite not quite finding a subject to go with it. What we'll write about though is smog, or how we held our breath for two weeks.

We knew that China would be smoggy, but were incredibly shocked at how bad it really was.  Our throats felt constricted almost as soon as we arrived in Beijing and simply got worse as time went on.  Nick succumbed first and became quite unwell, and when we got to Xuzhou it was my turn. Sick with a sore throat and mentally unable to face the smog outside.

Visibility was so poor we could barely see across the street.  It seems that farmers were adding to the problem by burning off the stubble in their fields. Locals however, were quite oblivious to the problem and were simply carrying on as normal, while we foreigners could think of nothing else!  We soon stopped mentioning the smog, as to the locals it was simply a bit of mist and nothing to get too excited about.

Aside from our health we were also worried about whether the airport would close and whether we'd make our international connection in Beijing. We were scared our flight wouldn't fly and scared that it would! In the end, we got to Beijing and thankfully, caught our flight out. 

We do marvel at how sturdy and tough the local people are.

F

'Building our country through diligence and frugality'

The accidental assessor

Now, where are these places we're going to? Beijing's easy enough, but where's this Xuzhou place? It's a city of two million people, but even the Chinese people we talk to here don't know it. They all know Suzhou, with all the famous gardens, and think we've just got our pronunciation wrong. Hang on, there it is, up the top of Jiangsu province, half way between Beijing and Shanghai.

Nick's the accidental assessor, Fenella's a more natural choice. She's been compiling the tests for a couple of years, after all. Our role now is to administer them on site and assess the students in their speaking, reading, writing, and listening skills. The tests are end-of-year tests for English language students at three Chinese tertiary institutions. They go on to study subjects in which English is the teaching medium.

It's going to be a hectic and interesting time. The accidental assessor has been receiving a crash course from the master. Travel and accommodation arrangements are all made. It's time to get this show on the road.

- N & F